Cover

Contents

List of Abbreviations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Texas now has the distinction of being home to two of the most dramatic
government raids on religious sects in recent U.S. history. The deadly
federal raid on the Branch Davidians outside Waco in 1993 stands as the
most memorable law enforcement debacle in modern times, resulting in the
deaths of 86 people...

Introduction

On April 3, 2008, Texas state police and the Department of Family
and Protective Services (DFPS) raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch near
Eldorado, Texas, a community of eight hundred members of the Fundamentalist
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a Mormon sect that
continues to practice...

PART ONE: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

1. The Past as Prologue: A Comparison of the Short Creek and Eldorado Polygamy Raids

When the story of the raid on the community of the Fundamentalist
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the Eldorado,
Texas, Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch rolled out, the past was prologue. The
similarities between the Short Creek raid of 1953 and the Eldorado raid of
2008 are striking, resonating...

The Texas raid on the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) community, now
generally considered an egregious and expensive miscalculation, was not the
first time that secular authorities have attempted to rescue children from an
unconventional communitarian society. In the four cases described below,
the authorities were...

3. The Struggle for Legitimacy: Tensions between the LDS and FLDS

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has spent a
considerable amount of time, money, and effort to distance itself from polygamy
and those who continued the practice since it stopped performing plural
marriages in the early 1900s (Cragun and Nielsen 2009). Those efforts were
redoubled as a result...

PART TWO: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DIMENSIONS

4. Reader Responses to the Yearning for Zion Ranch Raid and Its Aftermath on the Websites of the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News

While national media provide broad-based and politically astute
perspectives for readers and audiences, they sometimes fail to fully understand
local or regional cultural nuances that affect a story. The 2008 Texas
state raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(FLDS) is a case in...

5. Deconstructing Official Rationales for the Texas State Raid on the FLDS

The massive state raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
Latter Day Saints (FLDS) near Eldorado, Texas, in 2008 was predicated on
hoax phone calls to a domestic violence shelter hotline from an alleged sixteen-year-old girl inside the FLDS community who said she was raped and
beaten by her polygamous...

6. Texas Redux: A Comparative Analysis of the FLDS and Branch Davidian Raids

In the initial days after the Texas state raid, in 2008, on the Fundamentalist
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Eldorado,
some observers invoked a comparison with the disastrous federal raid on
the Branch Davidians outside Waco fifteen years earlier. Although the raids
had some ostensible...

7. Large-Scale FLDS Raids: The Dangers and Appeal of Crime Control Theater

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(FLDS) has been portrayed by the media, politicians, and law enforcement
officials as a sect that engages in and encourages illegal and immoral behavior.
The negative portrayal of this religious group has resulted in two arguably
ill-conceived and..

PART THREE: LEGAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES

8. Strategic Dissolution and the Politics of Opposition: Parallels in the State Raids on the Twelve Tribes and the FLDS

On June 22, 1984, the State of Vermont illegally seized 112 children
from the Twelve Tribes Community in Island Pond, Vermont, following allegations
of child abuse (Swantko 1998a; Palmer 1998). After individual hearings
District Court Judge Frank Mahady ordered the children returned to
their parents and issued...

9. Political and Legislative Context of the FLDS Raid in Texas

When new religious movements (NRMs) first appeared in the
United States in the 1960s and 1970s they were greeted favorably, as many
in society, including some parents, were pleased to see young people choosing
religion over the radical political activism of that chaotic time. The circumstances
changed...

10. Pyrrhic Victory? An Analysis of the Appeal Court Opinions Concerning the FLDS Children

The 2008 Texas raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch that
resulted in more than four hundred children being taken into custody by
the state was not an anomalous event, as the chapters in this volume make
clear. New religious...

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